The present study presents new data on the abilities of Homo heidelbergensis
to produce and perceive the sounds emitted during modern human spoken
language. The pattern of sound power transmission was studied through
the outer and middle ears in five individuals from the Sima de los
Huesos, four chimpanzees and four modern humans. The results were then
used to calculate the occupied bandwidth of the outer and middle ears,
an important variable related with communicative capacities. The results
demonstrate that the Atapuerca SH hominins were similar to modern
humans in this aspect, falling within the lower half of the range of
variation, and clearly distinct from chimpanzees. Specifically, the
Atapuerca SH hominins show a bandwidth that is slightly displaced and
considerably extended to encompass the frequencies that contain relevant
acoustic information in human speech, permitting the transmission of a
larger amount of information with fewer errors. At the same time, the
presence of a complete cervical segment of the spinal column associated
with Cranium 5 from the Sima de los Huesos middle Pleistocene site
(Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain) makes it possible to estimate the vocal
tract proportions in Homo heidelbergensis for the first time.
The results demonstrate that it is similar to the reconstructed vocal
tract in the La Ferrassie 1 Neandertal individual, which has been
suggested to have been capable of producing the full range of sounds
emitted during modern human spoken language. These results in the
Atapuerca (SH) hominins are consistent with other recent suggestions for
an ancient origin for human speech capacity.

Reconstruction of Miguelón, a H. heidelbergensis from Atapuerca, who, according to Manuel Ansede[es], died cursing his luck and the pain caused by the dental infection that killed him

to be true, this series of 41 MRCA reconstructions were not meant to be realistic proposals, but I intended with the restriction of all heads bald to gather a collection of skulls as containers for eyeballs. It is really astonishing for me to sometimes see, that my wild interpretations are not that far away from the versions of professional serious reconstructors.

Whatever the case I feel that your reconstructions, even if somewhat excessive in "free strokes" (i.e. "artistic", "intuitive"), are pretty good.

The big issue with reconstructions seems to be face traits, because the exact apportion of flesh and cartilage, never mind very important secondary traits like epicanthic fold or lip thickness and color, varies somewhat. Some of these traits a forensic artist may be able to reconstruct at least to an average but some others, notably "racial" traits, are quite opinable.

I think you did a stellar job compared to the average! The only thing I find gratuitous is the body hair - I find myself gravitated to the no eyebrow thing myself as well - but, at least yours looks like you've given them the respectability of having some of the esthetics of current humans! Maybe someday we'll even be able to model one that isn't weathered or grumpy looking, having their hair in a birds nest; and in prime reproductive age, and is actually beautiful.

omitting all hair was a conceptional decision before that series. After some preliminary sketchings I saw, that it is far TOO easy to turn a head with kontingent things like hair into something really different - and I wanted just fair conditions for all skulls. Within limitations you can feel more focused on what is left.

Interesting paper, but with the usual logical fallacies: that we still have archaic-Homo-like acoustic properties (not unexpected, of course: we descend from people like them) doesn't mean they spoke fluently, nor that they did not speak fluently, or at all. Our speech capacities are a combination of early hominoid duetting (gibbon song) + voluntary breath-holding (diving for seafood) + seafood consumption (labial, dental, velar etc clicks & consonants) + large brains (DHA etc in seafood): not unexpected when Pleistocene Homo dispersed along the coasts as far as Flores, Pakefield & Tafelbaai.For speech origins, google, eg, verhaegen speech song.

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